Skype Founder Crushes it Again

I recently spoke with Skype founder Niklas Zennström during his trip to New York City. We first met in 2005 when he and I became Young Global Leaders, part of the World Economic Forum based in Davos, Switzerland. After selling Skype Niklas decided to set up a London based Technology Investment fund focused on Europe. He was pressured to do I‎t in Silicon Valley but ever the contrarian went with his instincts which has proven very successful. We discussed Skype, his new venture fund Atomico, unicorns that he has backed, artificial intelligence, cyber Securities, technology applied to helping the environment and what young Forbes readers should do to have their own Skype like success.

Niklas Zennström - Forbes Q&A – November 2017

Q: You were the founder of Skype please tell us about this?

Zennström: The idea for Skype came to me as I was picking up huge phone bills calling my colleagues based across Europe. I travelled a lot, and in every country I would have to buy a new SIM card for my phone and pay extortionate rates to call my team. I thought that there must be a better way. Knowledge gained from our previous ventures in peer-to-peer networks turned out to be very useful, and we built Skype pretty quickly. We launched it in August 2003, and the exponential growth happened almost instantly. We had one million users after the first month. By January 2005 we already had 20 million active users and were gaining 5 new users every second. It was crazy. eBay ended up acquiring Skype in September 2005 for $3.5 billion. In 2009 my co-founder and I participated in an MBO with Silverlake, and then subsequently Microsoft acquired the company for $8.5 billion. What I am most proud of after all this is that I still hear people’s stories about how Skype changed the way they connect with their family and loved ones abroad. Today I do not own any parts of Skype and I am no longer part of the company, but I am still a happy user!

Forbes: So now you can do whatever you like so what motivated you to start Atomico?

Zennström: It was very difficult to raise money for Skype and my previous ventures in Europe. At that time, the strongest ecosystem and virtually all of the capital was in Silicon Valley. I was offered investment many times during my years as an entrepreneur but always with the caveat that I move my company to the West Coast. Although we managed to dispel this myth with Skype, I wanted to use my success to empower the next generation of European founders to prove to the world that great companies can come from anywhere.

Forbes: Do you have any unicorn stories for us?

Zennström: Atomico has a few unicorn stories, and even Europe’s first decacorn. The most recent unicorn story is quite a special one for me, though. Rovio, the Finnish gaming company that is famous for creating Angry Birds, recently went public at a valuation $1bn. We invested back in 2011, inspired by its team and impressed by the gaming ecosystem in the Nordics (which would also eventually produce our decacorn, Supercell!) Rovio grew fast and had particular success in China, becoming one of the most recognized media brands in the country. This was indicated by the amazing performance of the Angry Birds movie, which scored the third-biggest opening ever for an animated film in China. The IPO was in September this year and was a great moment for Kati Levoranta, Rovio’s CEO, and her team. It was a well-deserved outcome.